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Taste Me

By Eric Asimov May 5, 2006 1:04 pmMay 5, 2006 1:04 pm

Has anybody ever tasted you? They want to taste me all the time.

“Taste you’’ is the inelegant phrase for what winemakers and their marketers want to do to wine writers like me. I get a dozen or more calls like this every week: “So-and-so is going to be in New York next month or next week or — horrors! — tomorrow and would love to taste you on his wines,’’ the pitch goes. Ninety-nine percent of the time I say, “No, thank you.’’

What? Turning down free wine? Not exactly, although I have yet to meet the winemaker who doesn’t offer me a few bottles to take along, maybe even the ones he tasted me from. It doesn’t feel like a bribe. Most winemakers I know are very generous, they don’t want to waste wine, and they’d just as soon give it to you. But I’m like anybody else — the fewer bottles I have to carry, the better. So again I say, “No, thank you.’’

What’s with all the no’s? Isn’t it great to have an opportunity to taste all this wine?

No question about it, opportunity is a great thing. But consider what those opportunities amount to: I’ve been tasted in hotel rooms, in hotel lobbies, in office buildings, at bars, at restaurants, pretty much anywhere short of the back of a motorcycle. They’ve even wanted to taste me at my office, which, if you saw it you would know is even scarier than the motorcycle scenario.

Usually they bring their latest releases, which could amount to one or two wines, or a dozen different bottles. You taste, spit, make notes, say nice things or at least diplomatic things to the winemaker, who may be looking on with expectation, boredom or abject fear.

From their point of view, it’s always better for wine producers to be there to shape the tasting. What does that mean? In Mike Weiss’s excellent book, “A Very Good Year,’’ he talks about how important it is for a wine producer to get its “story’’ across. What’s in the glass is not so important as creating the perception that the wine is the lovingly hand-crafted result of a family’s blood, sweat and tears, etc.

You get the idea. Furthermore, the winemaker and marketer are right there to cue your reaction to the actual wine, to talk about the wine’s complexity, its intensity, its deliciousness. They understandably want to exert any influence they can.

So really, even though I’m given the opportunity to try these wines, it’s in the winery’s interest to “taste me.’’ At the very least, they’ve put their brand on my radar, and introduced me to generally very nice people who might figure in an article somewhere down the road. From my point of view, these tastings serve little purpose unless it’s a wine I am dying to try and don’t otherwise have access to, or it fits into an article I’m working on already, or I need to speak with the people who will be there.

But that’s the way the business works. Most often, there will be group tastings, where an importer or distributor gathers as many of his winemakers together and puts them all in a room. Then you can taste dozens, if not hundreds, of wines at the same times. I rarely go to these tastings either, for similar reasons. The whole taste, spit, taste, spit routine gives you the illusion of knowing the wines. Sometimes it’s a necessary exercise, as there are just too many wines in the world to sample each bottle with dinner.

Most wine writers are professional enough to be able to extrapolate, or imagine, how the wine would go with food and evolve over a few years. But I like to keep these tastings to a minimum, too.

I much prefer going to visit the winemakers on their own turf, at their vineyards or in their cellars, rather than in some fluorescent office building near my office. Yes, you’re subject to the same sales pressure, but I learn a lot from actually walking the vineyards and seeing the cellar, from talking with winemakers in their world rather than in mine. It’s the difference between tasting a wine and being tasted.

God, I wish I had your job. Of course, the vineyard is a fuller learning experience, but obviously you need an assistant to handle the tastings that you turn away.I’d gladly do a tasting from the back of a motorcycle! However, I too, would draw the line at my office. It’s pretty scary too.

Eric, I applaud your reluctance to ‘be tasted’ at will. No matter how much we try to control for it, there is an inherent subjectivity in tasting wines. Occasion, food (or lack thereof), number of wines tasted, and condition of one’s palate are just some of the variables. My experience as an amateur taster for over 30 years is almost entirely under two kinds of conditions: Controlled settings where six wines have been selected because they go together in some logical manner (or should be contrasted), or during actual dinner situations. I very much enjoy each format and engage in both regularly. However, I cannot count the number of times when results of formal tastings have been belied under actual dinner situations, and vice-versa. To paraphrase Socrates, thinking that we know what we do not know is less wise than knowing we do not know certain things. I am quite suspicious of the reliability of tasting results when scores of wines are tasted and spit out. How much less reliable is tasting wines under pressure from the seller in contrived settings!

Tasting (or “being tasted”) is a necessary evil in the wine biz…as a winefeek and a wine PR person, I agree that there is no substitute for walking the vineyards and tasting the wine alongside the cuisine of the region. Experiencing the wine in context leads to understanding why the wine tastes as it does.

Unfortunately, the odds of a wine writer popping in to visit producers I represent in Australia, Argentina, Austria, Alsace, or Arroyo Grande (and those are just the ‘A’s!) with any regularity are rather slim at best. The device of enabling a writer to taste a particular wine a little closer to home gives me a shot to maybe entice them into maybe making the trek to the Willamette Valley, Japan, Burgundy, or some other far-flung locale to visit that producer the next time they’re making travel plans.

“Tasting” someone is not the best way to expose a writer to a new wine or wine region, but for now it’s the best way I’ve got.

Perhaps it would be easier for the lay person to understand if it were explained thus:
Think of having your doorbell or phone ring every ten minutes by yet another (fill in your most annoying situation)…….and you can’t make them stop.

We all wish for a way to tell the various suppliers/agents how we like to be contacted and to please respect our wishes.

(For the record: I love hearing about new wines but please send the information by email. I can read it when I have the time and answer, or not, without being disturbed or disturbing anyone else.)

I edit drag racing copy for a living. While I can totally see how being “tasted” could be the least romantic and possibly the most tedious aspect of your job, I can think of less romantic and more tedious things to do for a paycheck.

And here we writers in the heartland have always envied you writers in NYC all the opportunities to taste all sorts of wines. I get print and e-mail invitations every week for what look like terrific events in NYC, but I can’t, you know, fly up there all the time. I was up in January for a tasting of Chateauneuf-du-Pape wines from 2004 at the Morrell tasting rooms, about the most unromantic and unevocative and just plain crowded place in which I have ever tasted wine. Sure, I would rather have felt the stony vineyards of Chateauneuf-du-Pape beneath my feet, but even under the conditions I encountered them, the wines were phenomenal. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

So many people envy those of us in the wine business, partly because we get to taste so many wines. I agree with Eric and with Roger: some times, with the never-ending calls of those who want us to taste their wines, it’s easy to want it all just to either stop for a minute or to; at least, slow down. But, as Don Vito Corleone said: “This is the life we’ve chosen for ourselves”, and believe me, there are a lot less pleasant ways to make a living. In reality, even though we can sometimes find ourselves frustrated or even angry, we’re blessed.

p.s. to the sales reps of the 62 wholesalers I buy from: Please remember, I don’t take calls on Mondays!

Frederic, it isn’t the events that are the issue – it’s easy to sort through invitations and pick and choose what you want to attend. It’s the visitors, and especially visiting winemakers or winery owners (whom distributors/importers will call up about begging you to do them a favor and meet with so and so), as Roger pointed out above, it’s a constant barrage of phone calls and/or people just “dropping by”. When I worked in New York it was non-stop, day or night, and often not just at work, but at home as well.

May I ask you to hear our story?
70 vintages working, on his own land, in Napa Valley…Van Ballentine of Ballentine Vineyards.
They will be in New York City at the end of June.
His life work is all in the bottle, but we don’t have to taste. Just shake his hand and you’ll know you have met a quiet icon of Napa Valley.